DOES ACCESS WORK - THE RELATIVE PERFORMANCE OF ACCESS STUDENTS AT A SCOTTISH UNIVERSITY

Since the mid-1980s there have been very considerable changes in parti cipation rates of all age cohorts in higher education courses within h igher education institutions and further education colleges in Scotlan d. In particular there have been disproportionate increases in the num ber of entrants aged 21 and over to full time undergraduate and sub-de gree courses. The increasing heterogeneity of the undergraduate popula tion raises questions of performance of the different populations of s tudents. Whilst some research has previously been carried out on the p erformance of mature, 'non-standard' and 'non-traditional' students, e xisting data is constrained by the restricted data sets of national ad missions systems, and the limitations of institutional record-keeping. In particular, little information exists on students whose entry rout e is the Access Course despite its designation as the 'third' route in to higher education (DES 1987) and its increasing popularity as a mode of entry from the late 1980s to the present day. In this study the pe rformance of students admitted to the University of Stirling with a va riety of traditional and non-traditional qualifications is compared. U sing detailed student records, fine distinctions by type of Access pro gramme or other mature entry qualifications and by points scores in GC E 'A' levels and SCE 'Highers' are compared. We show that performance of former Access students bears a relationship to the extent of contro l that the university exerts on the particular type of Access programm e. We confirm that non-Access students who didn't enter the university direct from school, but who came in with a variety of qualifications perform at least as well as 'standard' entrants. Our studies of entran ts with 'standard' qualifications confirms previous research that poin ts scores are important indications of success or failure. Finally stu dy of a discrete sub-set of former Access students studying Mathematic s and Science courses at the university shows that their performance i s slightly poorer than all Access students.